life inspired

Very cool link sent by Brennon Overcash: genetic algorithm to generate vehicles for rough terrain

"When Robert Oschler, a programmer, leaves his home, he knows it is secure. And if he ever has cause for concern, he can open his laptop and survey the house through the eyes of his watchdogs."Full news article @ NYTimes.com

"we analyze the collective behavior induced by 100 million application installations, and show that two distinct regimes of behavior emerge in the system. Once applications cross a particular threshold of popularity, social influence processes induce highly correlated adoption behavior among the users, which propels some of the applications to extraordinary levels of popularity." Full article @ PNAS

"Bacteria that live on the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster can affect their host's choice of mate by altering the fly's pheromones, a new study suggests. [...] [This] suggests that natural selection, which drives evolution, acts on a host and its symbiotic partners as a single unit rather than on each species in isolation." News story @ Nature News.

Full Paper: Sharon, G. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA. doi:10.1073/pnas.1009906107

"Scientists have identified and mathematically anatomized an array of processes that reveal the superb efficiency of natural systems." News article @ NYTimes.com